Earthquake. Today, 32 years and just a few hours after the 8.1 earthquake – and 7.5 aftershock the following day – that devastated much of Mexico City in 1985, today, another earthquake. 7.1. As I checked with friends and got notifications they’d marked themselves as Facebook Safe, it brought back so many memories of those days 32 years ago.
6:30 am September 19, 1985.
I was tired. I’d spent the last 7 hours putting together a TV show. I was working in production at Televisa in Mexico City – at the Chapultepec studios. The show I was working on was a weekly 3 hour program about music and my job was to edit and often post-produce, so I spent 3 nights a week in a small glass enclosed cubicle, surrounded by other small cubicles – just me, the “tape op”, more than a dozen reels, sometimes, of 1” video tape and 2 or 3 of the old battleaxe Ampex VPR2’s or the newer VPR-80’s, or was it the VPR3’s which always seemed to be on the fritz? My job, technically, was to tell the tape op what shots went where and leave the running of the machines to him, but since there had never been a piece of equipment I didn’t want to learn, the tape ops had all been happy to teach me everything there was to know about the machines from the time I started working with them, so I was pretty much as adept as they were and editing went quickly. Then the 4th night would be spent finishing the program – adding music, effects, titles etc. before turning it over to master control for air.
I was not only tired, I was hungry, so my plan was to stop off at the cafeteria inside Televisa Chapultepec for a bite to eat before going home to sleep. It’s what I usually did. Sometimes alone, sometimes with my boyfriend, who also often worked nights in another part of the studios, sometimes with my assistant at the time, Carlos. I gathered up the tapes, took them to CDM (the storage area) logged them in and wrote up a list of what I would need for the following session. By the time I was done I was too tired to stop at the cafeteria, so I walked home – about a 10- 15 minute walk. I got home, got ready for bed and lay down to sleep. And that’s when the apartment began to shake. It was 7:19 am.
Tremor, oh, ok. I’d been through a lot of these. Some so light you could barely feel them. Others stronger – a 6.0 or 6.5 maybe. I was used to them, so I just stayed in bed waiting for it to stop. My boyfriend didn’t seem too worried either. But it didn’t stop. And then all of a sudden the apartment stopped swaying from side to side and began jumping up and down. We shot out of bed and planted ourselves in a doorway grabbing onto the doorjamb until the bouncing stopped. The quake lasted 2 minutes – an eternity in earthquake time. My heart was racing as I threw on a robe and we ran up to the roof to see what had happened. Probably not the smartest move, but who was thinking? What I saw was unbelievable. Part of my neighborhood was in ruins. I could see Televisa’s transmission antennas but something looked wrong. And then I realized it was because there were only 2 antennas standing, not 3. And then the other thing that was wrong struck me. The only reason I could see the antennas so clearly from there was because the building across the street that had blocked much of the view of them, was no longer standing.
There was no more sleeping for the day. The streets looked like a war zone. I poked around the neighborhood for a bit – boyfriend went off to check on his family – and then I wandered back over to Televisa. What I saw was horrific. The entire front right side of the building was gone – the part of the building that housed administrative offices, newsroom, master control for a couple of networks – and the cafeteria – where I’d was going to stop for breakfast but didn’t. It had been crushed under the weight of the antenna – the one I could no longer see from the roof of my apartment building. Carlos has his own story to tell about that. He was in the cafeteria, breakfast in hand, and realized he had to go out to his car across the street to get his vouchers to pay for the meal. So he put aside his tray and headed outside – and the earth moved. And he saw the spot he had been standing in just a couple of minutes before – and where I had been less than half hour before – disappear as he watched. I think everyone inside the cafeteria died that day. More than 80 people in the building died, including Felix Sordo, who was a frequent guest on our show.
I headed over to the building where we had our production offices – just a few blocks from Televisa. The building looked like a soufflé that had collapsed onto its side. It was 13 stories and it just seemed to have slid down on itself. Eventually I met up with the rest of the production crew at Televisa Radio, where our executive producer and host of the show had had offices and where our offices used to be. My timeline sometimes gets a bit blurry and I don’t remember if some things happened on the day of the earthquake or on the following days – after the 7.5 aftershock the next day that took down more buildings and sent me fleeing from my neighborhood to my friend Angelica’s house on the other end of the city, with my cat and my boyfriend. I spent the next month there. And the story of how we managed to get there, on the other side of the city at night with no transportation, no buses, no metro – the electricity was out as well – with 2 backpacks and my cat (who was a New Yorker as well and had come with me to Mexico) – is another story. But one thing stands out. Everyone was helping everyone else. And everyone was on the streets. The streets were teeming with people, holding flashlights, candles, walking, some singing.
That night – the night of the earthquake and especially after the aftershock the following day – were some of the most terrifying times of my life. When I returned to my apartment that first night, the streets were filled with soldiers armed with heavy duty weapons, presumably to enforce order. But the people were ordering themselves and doing a much better job of it. I hated coming home through a gauntlet of weapons in the hands of nervous kids and jaded enforcers.
At the same time, as terrifying as it was, some things functioned as usual. And it’s that sense of normalcy that keeps you on track. I was lucky. I escaped not only unscathed but with a roof over my head – though I never went back to live in that apartment, the building next door was about 9 stories and damaged and I didn’t trust it not to collapse. But I had friends to go to until I could get another place – in another part of the city, unlike many thousands of people who ended up living in tents for years, their neighborhoods destroyed.
And the show had to go on, right? So in the immediate aftermath there I was back at Televisa Chapultepec again to get the reels I needed , so we could continue to work out of Televisa Sevilla in Portales, at at the other end of the city. CDM, where the tapes were stored, was undamaged so I could get the materials. It was right down the hall from the cafeteria that was no longer there. I entered the building to get the reels, accompanied by security for safety and was handed a mask to replace the one I’d been wearing. As I swapped them out I smelled what I thought was gas. I mentioned it and was told “no, that’s dead people you smell”. I stopped in my tracks … and then continued on to do my job. That’s always stayed with me – that one sentence – “that’s dead people you smell”. Some things are just hard to forget. I wasn’t there long. I grabbed my tapes and headed to Televisa Sevilla to get back to work. I think we set up offices at Televisa Radio on Ayuntamiento from then on. But since most of my work was at the Sevilla studios and I worked overnights Monday – Thursday I was only in the office at our weekly production meetings on Fridays, after my all night shift on Thursday. Fortunately they only lasted about an hour.
The first couple of days I was frantic to reach my family in NY to let them know I was ok. There was no way to communicate with them. Phones were out. And then an idea struck me, so I got to Televisa Deportes – Sports – and got the telex number of ABC Sports in NY where my former boss was working, along with access to a working telex machine. (Ok, you may not know what a telex was – think of it as an old time, far more cumbersome, and in no way private, IM). And the message got to Charlie and he got hold of my family and let them know I was ok.
There are so many stories to tell from those days, those weeks. Too many to write about here. Watching updates from opera great Placido Domingo on TV, dressed in a poncho, the hair on his chin growing longer every day as he worked non-stop alongside the rescuers at the Nuevo Leon building in the huge Tlatelolco apartment complex, where his aunt and other family lived. And where he continued to work, digging through the rubble even after there was little hope of their rescue.
Stories of people who miraculously escaped high floors unharmed when their building came down – and others in a place they wouldn’t normally have been, who never got out.
The earthquake was an 8.1 – by some accounts an 8.2. The aftershock the next night was a 7.5. And it was 32 years ago to the day of this 7.1 earthquake today. The official death toll back then, according to government accounts that no one believed, was 5,000 – 10,000 dead. Unofficial estimates put it between 30,000 and 45,000 – some even said 60,000. Just one look at the entire neighborhoods that came down, the absolute destruction in many areas and it’s clear that official estimates were just a fraction of the dead.
Today’s death toll stands at more than 100 as of now. Those may be official figures, so the true number isn’t known. And no one yet knows how many are buried under the rubble. Many of my friends have checked in to Facebook to say they’re safe. Others haven’t yet and I’m hoping to have news of them soon. One just checked in now, as I write this. If Facebook does nothing else, this method they created of letting people know you’re safe, could be the best thing they’ve ever done.
Every year I think of the tens of thousands who died in 1985 – and how easily I could have been one of them. How some, whom I didn’t know well but had interacted with or seen at work, did die. And I stop to remember others whom I knew a bit better. And now I add those who’ve died today to my thoughts. Today or 32 years ago, it’s all the same. The earth moves, and nothing’s the same.